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Intrepid Studios showed us a brand new map for @AshesofCreation on Friday and it’s a whole new Verra. Both figuratively and literally. Thank you to Steven for helping me out with some clarifications, although I know the community has about 900 more questions. Everything about Ashes has changed. From the world map size now being 1200 km², to the land mass being 450-480 km², with 750 km² of water, International Waters are now PVP zones, the way Nodes work are now different, everything about Ashes of Creation has changed.
This is a quick recap video. I’m going to be breaking down each of these things in their own videos as we get more information.
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Timestamps
00:00 – Video Start
00:55 – New Map
02:24 – 50 Mins as the Crow Flies
03:53 – Travel Times (Visuals)
05:15 – Node System Changes
06:04 – Lock out begins at Stage 3 Now
06:30 – Stage 1 and 2 Nodes are destroyed when Parent is destroyed
07:40 – PVP Zone in International Water
08:39 – Steven addresses concerns
09:45 – Node Policies
10:26 – Caravan Changes
12:55 – Close of Show
source
As a note, at 01:10 I said 450km² on the old map. The old map was actually 480km² Typo on the slide. My apologizes.
I liked everything in this most recent development update, except for the removal of corruption in the open sea. It might good, it might be bad, I'm skeptical and don't really understand why do that before Alpha 2. Hopefully they stop removing corruption from the world, though, or else I wouldn't be surprised if they started removing PvP from other zones to balance it out.
I think the new map does seem a bit small. I personally would like a bit more distance on it. Also, if the caravan is sent "a minute or two" outside the node, then it could end up being about halfway to the next closest node space. (Please correct me if I am wrong on that)
Feels far too small. 15 minutes minimum travel distance is needed from node edge to node edge.
Will the caravans only have one player's stuff? I was under the impression that it would be almost BDO-like in that there was a departure on some cooldown from a node to some other large node, and then it would depart with everyone's goods. I don't mind the anti-caravan camping idea I guess but I don't want caravans to be a 1-v-All by default.
If the distance is to matter, it should take no less than 120 minutes to travel from top to bottom. Why risk using a caravan if I can just run mules or get my family to send a runner and pay them to teleport me, an hour run is nothing. Sure caravans can carry more, but if it's just an hour I can make a couple trips and not risk losing everything in one run.
For the sake of the world size, I don't think the scientific node fast travel should be an option until stage 6.
I would like to see a little larger node size than just two minutes across, that seems like a one light po-dunk. I think five minutes to run across town is healthier, I also think it should take about eight to ten minutes to travel between nodes. Five minutes is nothing, that's so closetro eachother I could stand at the gates of one node and my GPU would have the other node loaded in view.
I think if they can make it longer without affecting performance than they should. But I don’t know how limited they are by the program.
I’ve always loved the idea of city states, so the buffer nodes resembling that should add some interesting aspects to the politics of the world.
Node to node feels small but I hope the world travel doesn't.
I like the caravan chagnes and really hope that system works.
Im worried about unit collision with caravans. People might use objects or other methods to block caravans movement if that is a feature in the game. I hope it isn't, in archeage it was annoying with cart blocking.
Travel:
tl;dr 50/75 minutes seems ok to me, but it's hard to judge that without actually playing the game.
When talking just numbers, 50/75 minutes whole map(adding geographical hurdles will probably stretch that by 30-60 minutes), and 5 min node to node seems too fast(especially node to node), but I feel that when actually playing the game, it will be ok, and for most people it's gonna be too long even. Also don't forget the dangers of the "road", most games have predetermined paths that are fairly safe so you can be on the move constantly, here(I'm assuming) it won't be the case until nodes are high level, and even then pvp is a thing, all that extends the journey.
Just looked it up and in WoW it takes 69:05 minutes(Eastern Kingdoms, 30.49KM) and 52:48 minutes (Kalimdor, 23.17KM) to run the map on foot with geographical hurdles(source YT: Classic Winds, "Finding the truth behind Classic WoW Movement"). And back when I played it flying over the continent zone to zone sometimes felt like a drag let alone running. Of course it's two very different games, and running in Verra might be way more enjoyable than WoW, thus making it feel less of a drag.
Open PvP waters:
I think this is a good change. Plays very well into the risk/reward system. And what Steven said about other means of travel between continents and coastal content put me at ease as a PvE player.
Caravans:
Totally agree with you there. Gives more incentive for players to launch them, and also provides a bigger challenge for those hunting them, requiring more team coordination and strategy.
Hope people that will get to A2 actualy meassure/use stopwatch or something and write down each and eevrything that comes to distance and like maybe even organize/make a team/small group of peopel to soly dedicate on that so it can be done quicly.
Example: 1 player is tasked to measure and write down the exact lenghts of the closes node,at the same time anotehr player is tasked to beasure from node to node,at same time yet another player is to measure the lenght of one biome,the next player at the same time is tasked to measure anotehr biom and so on.
That way we get as quicly as possible and as short time spent possible measurmenst of alot of stuff while not wasting to much A2 ti eon soly traveling and measuring the disatnces of stuff.
Hope someone actualy organize that type of thing and actualy go thru it so we can all have as in detail info as possible.
If there was some kind of inherit weakness or vulnerability from built into being in the middle, I could imagine that preventing the necessity of a larger map.
I can't envision the dynamic between the various moving parts with node capture but i could imagine buffer zone nodes being separate. It might be a playground for people who live outside of society like bandits of some sort, whether it's npc outsiders or players. Maybe some piratey group could thrive in these zones?
They are increasing housing per node CONSIDERABLY then, correct? This was already a potential problem before they reduced the planned node count…
I think the world size sounds just fine. I don't wanna spend my entire day just getting from one place to another but I want it to be big enough to where travel must be thought out and planned in advance instead of just walking around Willy nilly. I could go with bigger rather than smaller but I'm happy with this and it gives them room to add more in future xp
Big maps sound good on paper, but travel time feels like half the reason new world died. Will having an even bigger map not make day-to-day activities painstaking?
Yeah I don't remember exactly what they said in the past but I feel like they said something like "several hours" to travel from top to bottom (or 20 minutes per square). Now hearing that there isn't even 1 hour of travel time feels too short.
50 minutes i think is okay. Those 50 minutes would be 100% dedicated to travel. No exploring off the path, no gathering, no checking nodes for goods, not finding dungeons not even stopping to smell the roses. The most engagement would be avoiding packs to not get dismounted.
Is that fun and engaging for a lot of people? I would assume most would not find it so. So wanting that to be longer would entice people to travel less because it would not be engaging.
My $.02.
I see a lot of comments about people thinking the map is too small. But this map is waaay bigger than Azeroth for instance right? Plus you even have the open seas to play on, which are not even available in WoW.(i.e. the sea between kalimdor and eastern kingdom isn’t even real)
50 mins top to bottom without obstruction like mountain, river, lakes or buildings would seem small. but if you need to go around structures then it would make it longer then 50 mins. but idk
I think the world size size is fine, but testing is needed. 50 minutes flying is a long time. Throw in terrain obstacles and you've added a significant chunk of time.
The changes to the caravans is very nice and def move in the right direction imo.
I have no desire to be a pirate or own a ship and sail the seas….I did that in real life and was stuck out to see 169 straight days before a liberty call and got to set foot on land…so no sea going for me.
But as a game design with them keeping the coastal areas "safe" is a good thing. The sea is a finniky mistress, beautiful BUT very deadly.
I like the node restructuring as well…especially the 20 hangover nodes…and thre reduction of nodes as well.
I am curious about the size of the underealm now, I think it will grow in size due to their mentioning alternate routes to take.
Hell, I got excited when Margaret said you can have your mount walk beside you.
Great vid, keep them coming!
Wow, was it a LOT to unpack from Friday.
Maybe they could bulge the middles making the intersection even harder to cover.
It's that's 50mins as the crow flies then I'm guessing we'll over an hour on a mount .
It would be cool if the buffer zone nodes can develop on their own imho
Feel like they should double time for sense of scale. But who knows, might be too un fun or just too much…
I think the world is going to be plenty big enough. I think the buffer zones should be affected by what is happening (or not happening) around them. The travel time may be too long – yeah, it'll be real cool for the first 2-3 months when it's all new BUT after that I think long travel times will become really annoying as they eat into your available play time when you just want to log in a get some stuff done…. If it's realistically AN HOUR to travel across a continent then 10-15 minute travel time to get where you are going will be pretty common. That is a LONG ass time when you are playing a video game.
I like the caravan changes.
I don't have an active wow sub but thinking back, if you rode a mount from the top of eastern plaguelands to the bottom of strangethorn vale, I feel like that would easily be an hour. I was expecting this game to be way bigger.
Yes to all the questions regarding the map. However, what if, while the map gets larger, the number of nodes continues to drop and the general world content becomes even less tied to the nodes, BUT every node could reach level 6 and be much larger? I'm talking, forget calling each part of the "chain" a node, but instead a different sector of one node. I feel like this would result in gigantic metropolises which look nothing alike from each other. Think Divinity's Reach in GW2, but larger with more going on and the same level of verticality. In turn, the world would have to be even more dangerous with more real-time events going on that are a constant threat to each node in order to possibly de-level it if enough damage is done. Think about it like having 25-40 different player-created factions based on the node type (and maybe even a node sub-type). Maybe either drop the teleportation mechanic OR make it a big deal to do by making it super resource-heavy and time-sensitive. Also, anything on the world becoming a globe?
I don't think the world will be too small, in black desert online you can traverse the entire world in about 7-10 minutes on a t8/t9 horse with the right skills. You, it will take about 15 minutes if you auto path on that same horse. Probably about 20 mins if you're just walking / running with autopath. Each major city in BDO is about 30 seconds to get from one end of the other (walking). This is all following the roads and therefore going around terrain and such.
One of the differences
i thinkwill be that there are no defined grind zones and such in Ashes, so that 50 min travel time will be only how long it takes to get to one axis of where you think the people are, then the next step would be, are they moving in a direction and actually finding them. In BDO if you wanted to attack someone grinding well you know the rotation so once your guildie said "this persons at sausans" it was very easy to find them and that you could bet they'd be there for afew hours in the same circle.So my gut feeling is that it will be okay. HOWEVER assuming like 5k players on each continent, it might be crowded? Maybe that's desired so the world doesn't feel dead…? Who knows…
One concern i still have is robbery in cities. We're still not sure exactly how the corruption will manifest (AFAIK) but I think if you murder someone in a city because you know they have alot of resources on them and you can somehow kill them and store the resources then i think we will see more of that than people might like to admit. I know you can't store things in public warehouses as a corrupted player but you can store them in your freehold, im not sure if that also means in-node housing will be available for use for storage…the wording is a smidge unclear.
In relation to other changes…
I like the caravan changes overall. Open seas changes seems like they'd be super fun. Very exciting update stream!
Even if it doesn't include geographical hurdles, I still believe that 50 minutes is a very short time to get across a continent. It's a bit better than what we thought but not enough.
Like I said on your stream limited fast travel won't help a lot with zerging if they start from the middle and get anywhere within 25-30 minutes. l appreciate you for talking about this on this video and bringing attention to it!
3 minutes and 30 seconds to get to another node also seems to be very short to me. Almost feels like you leave a node and you can immediately see the next one in front of you.
I really hope they consider slowing down movement speed a little bit and/or introduce other elements to help increasing traveling times a bit more.
Thank you for the updates in any case!
So does that mean the entire map is only 40 Km x 30 Km?
World needs to be bigger for trading its way to short for it otherwise.. I would say 120 minutes would be a good sitting area cause they can see how it goes from there but if were doing trading it has to be large enough to push players to want to buy where they are at without ppl riding 10 mins away and getting better prices cause it will outright kill a lot of zones otherwise.. IF WE ARE DOING 85 zones the world has to be outright huge otherwise they will need to further reduce the zone count to make each one have big enough areas to make it fulfill the same role by giving enough area to which the players will just buy using the prices in the area.. Also, the bigger the areas the more pvp on said caravans and more likely the more money can be paid to guard them if that is also a thing.. I say 120 cause it will be big enough to halt most zergs cause its easier for everyone to see what the "Zergers" are getting ready to do and it adds more prepare time.
regarding the 50 min mounted length of the map, not sure if its short, my guess is that it would be nice to take a bit longer, around the 70 min range, but, i think it will really come down to how the resources are distributed around the world. at first it sound to me thar an organized guild or alliance, could easy take control of an X resource needed to craft X item, controlling the economy of that region and that would make it really hard for lones adventurers or weak group to farm that X resource in order to progress.
regarding the caravan system i think that change is for the better, but i admit iam still trying figured it all out.
Put another way.
The world map went from 21.9kmX21.9km to a size of 34.6kmX34.6km
I don't believe it is official, but the land mass of the old map was approximately 280 square km
Or 16.7kmX16.7km
The new land mass is now 21.2kmX21.2km
Sometime in the near future I'm going to run my happy butt across other game maps for no reason than to get a better feel for the size of Verra
Love the open seas idea. Also i dont think the travel time is short. There are going to be terrain restrictions, also this is just the launch. They can start working on increasing the map with expansions. For start of an mmo this is pretty good to me
mmmmm this update may get my money for A2 which i really wasnt interested in prior
It should be to travel buy mount from top to bottom of the biggest continent be at leased 3 hours , Why you say. so I spend 50 min trying to get away from some one chasing me
3.5 minutes from the edge of one town to the other is not short… especially given that wars and raids are likely going to be conducted from a few nodes away. I feel that the people who are complaining about the short travel times are not actually taking the time to visualize just what a 3.5 minute commute means in a computer game.
I don't think i like that when a parent node is destroyed the vasal nodes are too
MMO nerds what weird mounts to get around quicker. Then they complain that they can get across the land mass too quick 🤣
Mobility need to be slow down , if 3.30 min between nodes borders is for the mid tier mount , less than 3.30 for the fastest seems to fast. And if it's the fastest mount speed , 50% movement speed boost seems to low for the best mount vs foot.
It also mean that a caravan will take between 3.30 and 5.15 min( + x min for geographical detour ) to travel node to node. I fear that fastest caravan will be the meta , with the possibility to reload it in every 3+ node on the way , seem to me a bit to safe.
Or they should have scaling cost for every node you load your caravan into, could fix the issue.
But I'll suggest to do a spot test to see if those number aren't to low , making to travels to safe.
Btw do we know if caravan are faster than a player on foot ?
You the man Jahlon
When I think about the world size in terms of exploration, It's probably big enouhg as it is. However, if I try to imagine dynamic trade between regions (which may be closer to each other) than I'm not sure if the distance matters enough. If locations on the map are too close too each other, than won't people find easy/ safe ways to move items around?
For example, two biomes next to eachother may have unique resources that in theory they may want to trade via a caravan. But travel distance is not a big limitation, so instead of stockpiling locally to move in bulk later via a caravan, some players just gather the materials they need in the next biome and walk the goods home in smaller quantities, skipping the risk of moving them in bulk or paying any fees for moving the goods.
This could devalue the caravan tade system quite easely, unless there is severe restrictions on how much items you can carry on you.
I don’t know what the fuck a buffer zone is
It depends, lets take archeage as example try running in halcyona durin battle hours even tho whole map can be covered rl fast. If there is enough obstacles on the way it shouldnt be a problem.
50 minutes of travel time is huge. The map is actually massive.